Note: The class will use the transcription policy formulated for The Papers of George Washington, a modern scholary documentary edition published by the University Press of Virginia. Students are strongly urged to read G. Thomas Tanselle's The Editing of Historical Documents for an overview and discussion of transcription policy in modern documentary editions. The following policy statement is printed in the front matter of each of the volumes of The Papers of George Washington.
Transcription of the documents in the volumes of The Papers of George Washington has remained as close to a literal reproduction of the manuscript as possible. Punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing, and spelling of all words are retained as they appear in the original document. Dashes used as punctuation have been retained except when a period and a dash appear together at the end of a sentence. The appropriate marks of punctuation have always been added at the end of a paragraph. Errors in spelling of proper names and geographic locations have been corrected in brackets or in annotation only if the spelling in the text makes the word incomprehensible. When a tilde is used in the manuscript to indicate a double letter, the letter has been silently doubled. Washington and some of his correspondents occasionally used a tilde above an incorrectly spelled word to indicate an error in orthography. When this device is used the editors have silently corrected the word. In cases where a tilde has been inserted above an abbreviation or contraction, usually in letter-book copies, the word has been expanded. Otherwise, contractions and abbreviations have been retained as written and a period has been inserted after an abbreviation. When an apostrophe has been used in a contraction it is retained. Superscripts have been lowered and if the word is an abbreviation a period has been added. If the meaning of an abbreviation or contraction is not obvious, it has been expanded in square brackets: "H[is] M[ajest]y." Editorial insertions or corrections in the text also appear in square brackets. Angle brackets < > are used to indicate illegible or mutilated material. A space left blank in a manuscript by the writer is indicated by a square- bracketed gap in the text [ ]. Deletions from manuscripts are not indicated. If a deletion contains substantive material, it appears in a footnote. If the intended location of marginal notations is clear from the text, they are inserted without comment; otherwise they are recorded in the footnotes. The ampersand has been retained and the thorn transcribed as "th." The symbol for per ($PR) is used when it appears in the manuscript. The dateline has been placed at the head of a document regardless of where it occurred in the manuscript.
Since GW read no language other than English, incoming letters written to him in foreign languages were generally translated for his information. Where this contemporary translation has survived, it has been used as the text of the document, and the original version has been included in the CD-ROM edition of the Washington Papers. If there is no contemporary translation, the document in its original language has been used as the text. All of the documents printed in this volume, as well as the routine documents omitted from it and various ancillary materials, may be found in the CD-ROM edition of the papers. The omitted documents are listed in the appendix to this volume.
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